Solution to resolve cognitive ambiguity in interactive customization of product shape

Abstract

Interactive genetic algorithms have been used in a wide variety of applications and extensively developed to facilitate the per-sonalization and customization of products for users. However, the ambiguity effect or cognitive ambiguity of users during the product customization process will affect the effects of the final customized product. Here, we first deconstructed the ambiguity effect into cognitive ambiguity during early decision-making and that during the decision-making process. A spatial mapping strategy that involves “text-image-symbol” and a clustering strategy were then proposed to mitigate cognitive ambiguity in the two different stages, respectively. Then, a specific application example—“Chinese vase design” was studied. Based on the proposed strategy and interactive genetic algorithm, a prototype of computer-aided design system for product modeling was developed by MATLAB software. Then, 10 users were invited to experiment at three different cases (not using the proposed strategy, using spatial mapping strategy, using spatial mapping strategy and scheme clustering strategy). The experiment results have verified that the spatial mapping strategy was efficient to solve cognitive ambiguity during early decision-making, and clustering strategy was efficient to solve cognitive ambiguity during the decision-making process.